# Looking for MOO site administrators

Jay Carlson (nop@nop.com)
Sun, 11 Feb 1996 18:28:09 PST

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    Pavel writes:

    > I would like to collect a list of the administrators of MOO servers
    > with at least 50 regular users (i.e., those who connect at least
    > once or twice a month).  I am interested in both public and private
    > MOOs, so long as they are of sufficient size.  If you are such a
    > person, please send me a message with a very brief description of
    > the size of your MOO's user community.  If you know of such a person
    > who is not on this mailing list, please forward this request along
    > to them.

    I don't think this request will elicit a full response.  Many people,
    including me, are reluctant to respond with this kind of information
    without an overview of what this will be used for.  I can think of
    several uses off the top of my head for such a list:

      o  A mailing list for distribution of sensitive security-related
         information, intended for first use by actual administrators.

      o  User community size information for publication in a magazine or
         journal.

      o  Justification of effort spent on MOO by pointing out to management
         what kind of impact this project has had on the Internet
         community.

      o  Design feedback on typical sites in order to drive future
         development.

      o  Internal research documents.

      o  First-order estimate of commitment in the user community to
         decide feasibility of a users group or consortium.

      o  Marketing numbers.

    I think other important things to consider when you see any request
    like this on the net are:

      o  Scope of dissemination.  I think it's more worth it to respond if
         I get some numbers back.  This also reduces the amount of
         duplicated effort.

      o  Detail of dissemination.  I guess I'd feel better if I knew what
         parts of this would be presented as composites.

      o  Who's making the request.  I'm a lot more inclined to help
         someone who has helped me.  (Yes, Pavel very much falls in this
         category.)

    A lot of my reaction to this is knee-jerk response to various
    Internet-, MUD-, and LambdaMOO-related surveys over the last few years.
    Often you see scholarly requests asking the same questions you
    answered in another survey a few weeks earlier.  Because my time is
    limited (and so is the community's) I've been sticking to a hard-nosed
    rule: "no free information for information sinks."  I doubt this
    survey triggers this rule, but as it was originally written I can't
    tell.

    Jay Carlson
    nop@nop.com    nop@ccs.neu.edu    nop@kagoona.mitre.org

    Flat text is just *never* what you want.   ---stephen p spackman